Introduction

This is a small, hand-maintained list of text editors and IDEs (Integrated
Development Environments), useful for programmers and other developers.

Open Source Text Editors and IDEs

Cross-Platform Open Source Editors

Vim and gvim - a cross-platform vi-derivative
editor (with many enhancements) with a Windows-conventions-emulating
configuration (:source $VIMRUNTIME/mswin.vim). Has many plugins
available on the site, supports Unicode and encodings, syntax highlighting,
has both console and a GUI versions. Vim licence (open-source and
GPL-compatible licence).

XEmacs - cross-platform Emacs derivative,
with console and GUI versions. Is mostly written in and extendable with the
built-in Emacs Lisp scripting language. Very hard to get used to from my
experience. (GPLed).

gedit - a text-editor for
the Gtk+/GNOME environment, with many plugins and extensions, and good unicode
support. (GPLed)

Kate - a programmer’s editor for
KDE (the K Desktop Environment). As of this writing (January 2010), it crashes
a lot on MS-Windows. Contains syntax highlighting, good support for Unicode
and bi-directional scripts, and other features.

KDevelop - an IDE for the KDE desktop
environment, written in Qt/C++ and primarily intended for C/C++. As of this
writing (February, 2010), may have stability problems on Windows. (open-source,
GPLed).

Qt Creator -
a cross-platform IDE written in Qt/C++, and primarily intended for developing
Qt applications. Part of the Qt SDK from Troll Tech (now part of Digia).
(open-source, LGPLed).

Code::Blocks - an IDE written in C++
(and primarily for it) using the wxWidgets toolkit. Runs on Windows,
Linux/Unix, and Mac OS X and supports multiple compilers.

Leo - an IDE
written in Python, using PyQt, for Python and other languages that takes the
unusual approach of also integrating project management, a rendering engine,
and a music and video player. (MIT licence).

Wing IDE - a proprietary and
cross-platform IDE for Python. (Proprietary and commercial.)

Komodo IDE - a proprietary
and cross-platform IDE for dynamic languages, from ActiveState, based on the
Mozilla platform. (Proprietary and commercial.) A free, open-source, and
limited, version of it is available as
Komodo Edit.

IntelliJ IDEA - a
proprietary and commercial IDE for Java. Has an open-source version with
more limited functionality.

PyCharm - a
proprietary and commercial IDE for Python, with a focus on
Django
development. (Proprietary and commercial.) A “Community Edition” is available
under the open-source Apache License.

If you like what you see here, or have any comments, suggestions or
corrections, feel free to E-mail me about it. I’d love to hear from you. If
you have found what I did helpful or entertaining, please consider
helping.